Essay on Diasporic Identity Wins National Writing Prize
First Prize in the 2025 Patty Friedmann Creative Writing Competition is a significant national honor, and this year the award recognizes Creative Writing MFA student Katrina “Kat” Echevarría Richter for her essay “Becoming Boriqua.” The competition is presented by LMNL, a New Orleans–based literary and arts organization that hosts the annual Words and Music Festival in partnership with One Book One New Orleans. Together they highlight exceptional work across fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, public high school writing, and the Beyond the Bars category.
“Becoming Boriqua” first took shape in her application to the Rutgers–Camden MFA program, then grew through close work with Professor Tom McAllister. The essay examines immigration, diasporic identity, white supremacy, and maternal lineage. Kat returned to the piece over the summer with a new approach grounded in the rhythm and structure of dance. Drawing on her background in dance studies and Black vernacular performance, she reshaped the essay into a narrative that moves with purpose while holding the complexity of family history and cultural inheritance.
Judge Brooke Champagne praised the essay for its elegant structure and its clear-eyed exploration of living within a divided cultural and racial identity, calling it a “dazzling prose performance.” Kat will share her work at the Patty Friedmann Writing Competition Reading and Awards Lunch in New Orleans at 2541 Bayou Road, where winners and runners-up gather to read their pieces and celebrate this year’s anthology selections. Her essay will also appear in LMNL’s 2026 anthology.
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Rutgers–Camden’s MFA: A Multi-Genre Journey in Creative Writing
The Rutgers University–Camden Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing is a 39-credit terminal degree that fosters a multi-genre approach, encouraging exploration across fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Students engage in small, personalized workshops and craft classes led by distinguished, award-winning faculty, including recipients of the Pulitzer Prize and Guggenheim Fellowship. The program offers full financial support to all full-time incoming students, encompassing tuition remission and a living stipend. Situated just minutes from Philadelphia, the campus nurtures a vibrant literary community centered around the historic Writers House on Cooper Street. Additionally, students have opportunities to interact with nationally acclaimed visiting authors through the NEA-supported Writers in Camden series and can participate in international experiences across Europe, Asia, or South America.
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